One year on...

 We’re now into that odd territory of “this time last year...” - past the point when we’re looking back at things being normal, that had to all intents ceased by early March - and now into the area where things had begun to close down. Most schools had already begun to discuss a possible switch to remote learning, shops and offices in the area I work in had begun to take precautions after it became apparent that the virus was starting to take hold. Pubs and bars had mostly switched to asking customers to use contactless payments rather than cash, and it was rapidly becoming apparent that they would in turn be instructed to close sooner rather than later. 

Greathead Shield - Moorgate Station.

On 1st March last year we did a Hidden London visit to Moorgate in the morning, followed by another of our “underground-overground” walks - from Liverpool Street to Leyton, ending up with the traditional pint in a handy pub. Lunch was grabbed en-route from Brick Lane market - which was busy, and I can’t recall feeling particularly uneasy about being in the crowds at that stage. There was never any suggestion that the  Moorgate tour would be cancelled either, although I do have a feeling that may have been the last weekend that the tours went ahead.  From that weekend things really did start to ramp up though - CAMRA announced soon after that all meetings and social events would either be cancelled or would take place “virtually”, and the likelihood of other social plans being cancelled had also started being discussed. Premier league football had announced that it was suspending its season, and the Rugby 6-nations was abandoned part way through the tournament with the remaining games to be played “in due course” - they were eventually completed in October.

This day a year ago was notable for two reasons - firstly it was the day that NHS England announced it was cancelling all non urgent operations to free up beds for tackling the virus. Hindsight now suggests that as much as anything else it was the staff that they wanted to free up, as by that time they were likely aware that the beds that would be required would not be standard hospital beds, but rather ICU and high dependency ones. The second was that it was the last time I went to the gym! I remember it being really quiet, and also making a point of washing my hands thoroughly on arrival and before leaving, but not feeling particularly wary or uncomfortable about being there - possibly because it WAS so quiet. 

I think even at this stage last year it was impossible to truly envisage what was ahead, and certainly I don’t believe any of us could have imagined that we’d still be dealing with it a full 12 months on! 

Robyn 

This week...

 

...has been fairly emotionally heavy. The unfolding news about Sarah Everard since her disappearance last week, culminating in the awful news that remains were found that have been confirmed to prove that she was murdered. The arrest of a serving Metropolitan Police officer in connection with first her disappearance and subsequently her murder**. The standard reaction of countless men, lower lips hanging petulantly out, reminding us that “#NotAllMen”... 

For the majority of my 40-something (c’mon - a girl has to have SOME secrets!) years, I’ve lived with the usual warnings that women simply accept. Don’t walk alone at night. Don’t wear the wrong clothes. Don’t walk in really secluded places. Tell someone where you’re going, tell someone when you get home. I’ve altered my hair to make it less grabbable from behind, I’ve changed shoes to some I can run in, should I need to. I’ve walked home with my keys clutched between two fingers “just in case”. I’ve switched to listening to podcasts when running or walking because it means I can hear more of the sounds around me. I’ve doubled back on myself when walking in the dark, and got around a corner and run full tilt until my lungs have said enough, and sped up because I’ve heard the footsteps behind me doing the same... If you’re a man, reading this, pretty much all of your female friends and relatives have done all or most of here things at some stage. Does that surprise you? Shock you? I bloody hope so - because if you consider that to be nothing to be shocked about, you can leave, right now, and never come back. (And give your head a wobble - we’re talking about pretty much EVERY woman being scared, and it’s entirely down to the behaviour of some men.) 

Sarah Everard was walking home. Simply walking from one location, to another. It was a walk she’d likely done before. She did all the “right things” - bright clothing, a well lit route...the things we’re reminded, as women, that we “need to do” for our own safety. Our own safety from men. If you’re a man, reading this, I hope that makes you ashamed. I hope that also makes you spark a conversation with your male friends. That’s what’s needed now. Ridiculous, I know, that men won’t listen to women, on the issue of women’s safety, but they will listen to other men. Sigh. 

If you are one of the “good guys” - there are things you can do routinely, to make us feel safer, more comfortable :

- if you’re walking behind someone else at night, cross the road, give that person space. If it’s a woman this will make her feel safer. 

- if you are aware you’re walking behind  woman, pull your hood down if you’re wearing one. Being recognisable makes us feel that you’re less likely to do anything we might need to recognise you for, later.

- don’t speed up to get past us faster. That simply takes the situation from “there’s a man behind me, and he’s catching me up” to “there’s a man behind me, and it sounds like he’s chasing me”. If you’re naturally gaining on us, maintain that pace, and cross over. If you’re simply keeping pace, drop back a little.

- if you do need to pass us on the same side of the road, consider how we might feel safest. Try not to trap us between a building and you, and of we’re clearly following the pools of light from street lamps, respect that’s what we need to do. 

- if you’re standing with a group of mates, maybe having a smoke or a vape outside a pub, don’t split into two groups to force us to walk between you, instead move back to the wall or fence behind you - let us have the clear space to take as much room as we want to pass. 

- if you decide to approach a woman in a pub, or bar, read the body language. If she’s uncommunicative, or monosyllabic, that probably means she isn’t interested in your attention. If she responds to your overtures with “no” - or anything approaching that, this is a rejection - not an invitation to negotiate. Retain your dignity, say “nice meeting you” and walk away. 

We KNOW it’s “Not All Men” - we KNOW it’s a small minority that deliberately make women uncomfortable, and an even smaller number that are actively aggressive or violent towards us. The problem is, those men don’t carry that information around on neon signs over their heads, so we have no way of knowing whether you’re one of them, or not.  This means you’re all a threat. However, consider this - if you are a man who has ever walked down a road, at night, behind a woman, without even considering that she is petrified wondering whether that is going to be the moment that her luck will run out, then you HAVE- even without meaning to - been guilty of frightening a woman. It’s time to take responsibility for that, listen to the women in your life, learn from what they have to say, and then take up the cudgels on their behalf. 

Robyn

** During the time I was writing this it has been confirmed that the Police Officer arrested for her abduction and murder has now been charged with those offences. **

Long walk Sunday...

 Well, long-ISH anyway - at just over 8 miles this one was far from our longest effort, but definitely racks up as one of the nicest, I think! 

Like so many people, we’re starting to find it a bit of a challenge to come up with anywhere different to walk now - having spent very nearly a year all bar the 4 weeks we’ve spent in the Hebrides having a LOT of time to walk locally, we had rather begun to feel that we’d explored just about everywhere we could around the area, and quite a lot of it many times, too!  With another month at least before we’re going to be going anywhere new, we turned to the trusty OS Maps app for inspiration again, and MrEH suggested that we headed out on a path that I’d found on one of my solo walks a few weeks ago. 

Out through Old Harlow and into Harlowbury - that’s the Harlowbury Chapel above, a scheduled ancient monument no less, and dating back to 1180 it is, by some way, Harlow’s oldest building. There’s no access to the chapel now sadly, other than on occasional open days, but it’s quite nice just to walk past. 

On then and initially through a new housing development which sadly has played havoc with the footpaths  - the developers having seemingly closed quite a lot of them with no signage and no diversions, we had to backtrack and eventually resort to following a road to a completely different to the one we had planned to use, but thankfully did find that one had been restored and were soon alongside the wonderful Gibberd Garden - the former home of our inspired Town Planner and home of rather a lot of his extensive sculpture collection some of which is in plain sight as you walk by - it’s most entertaining to be walking along a lovely lane and suddenly spot a huge pair of stone columns rising up to your right, or a 20th Century polished steel effort of wonderful sweeping curves... The garden is also the home of our local beer festival in normal times - an event which also gives you admission to the gardens themselves, a lovely treat! 

The path then continues down towards the railway line - and gets quite muddy in places - but amusingly continues straight under this fallen tree (there’s plenty of room to pass beneath!) before getting to the bridge - where for a moment we thought flooding was going to cause a problem, but nope, someone had a solution to that...

Yes, that is a sort of causeway of fallen branches and lengths of old tubing, and yes, back beyond it that is a line of blocks that have been placed as sort of stepping stones to enable you to pass through without getting your feet wet! 

By this stage the sun had largely retreated in exchange for these gorgeous clouds, and it was starting to feel quite chilly, but not enough so that when we realised a little diversion across a field using an obvious and well trodden path would bring us to the river and the option to use the towpath for part of our return towards home. 

And once there we were rewarded with first the reflection of those clouds on the water, and second a nice chat with a couple litterpicking alongside the path - they’d already got three bags pretty much full and sadly this is just one of many times they’ve been out and gathered a similar amount. 

Back through Old Harlow and this lovely yarn bombing had appeared since we passed by earlier! I’ll be keeping my eye out for any more of these appearing now - SO bright and cheerful! Maybe that’s something I could use my elementary crochet skills for? 

Robyn 

Sunday dinner...

 You may remember that we’re big fans around here of buying good meat, but the cheaper cuts, and then cooking them carefully to get a really tasty result. Today’s dinner was an example of his - a lamb breast bought from the farmers market a couple of months ago - defrosted through the day yesterday ready to be popped in the oven this morning. A lot of people view a lamb breast as being rather a fatty cut - and indeed it is, but cooked nice and slowly much of that fat renders down and runs out, while helping to keep the meat wonderfully juicy and succulent. It’s also a brilliant cut to add masses of flavour to. 

First job when I got up this morning was to get the oven on - set to gas 5 at first I left it to heat while I prepped the lamb, bringing it out of the fridge and unrolling to let it begin to warm up a little, I set it aside and started to get ready the flavourings I wanted. The pared-off rind of a lemon. Some rosemary, and parsley. Some garlic. Those were all chopped finely. Plentiful salt and pepper, and a good slug of rapeseed oil and the lot was mixed together and rubbed over the meat before it was tightly rolled up and again, wrapped equally tightly in foil (which saves the need to tie it with string) and then the whole lot popped into a pan and into the oven. 20 minutes later the heat was turned down to 3.

Next thing to be done was the root vegetable bake that I’d decided to serve alongside the meat. An absolute winner of a recipe this one, and brilliant for using up any stray root veggies that you might have left. Today ours used half a small swede, the final sweet potato and several regular tattles as well. Finely slice all your veg - I use a mandolin as that’s the easiest way of getting really thin even slices - then assemble.

 If you add a bit of bacon, ham, or chopped chorizo you can almost turn this into a meal on its own in fact. Just layer up the slices of your chosen veg - season with salt and pepper every few layers - and you can add some cheese in the middle for a nice gooey surprise too - I used some sliced Raclette today, but a handful of good strong grated cheddar works really well too. Then pour over a mixture of veg stock and double cream with a bit of cornflour beaten in for thickening, cover with foil and shove in the oven - today I just popped it in at the same low temperature the meat was at. 

The bake takes longer to cook right through than you might expect - a good 2 hours at that heat, but you want it to cook slowly so you get the soft melting texture of the veg and cheese combining as you eat it - there’s nothing more disappointing than a half cooked slice of potato! I uncovered it for the last 30 minutes and added a bit of grated cheddar across the top for a crunchy topping. 

This is what the meat looked like when it came out of the oven - although you can make an effort at carving it basically it IS going to fall apart, but it was every bit as tender as it looked. 

And that’s the final plateful - the meal also used up the last of the broccoli from last week’s veg box - Yep, that’s the stalks as well there, exactly the same flavour as the florets and absolutely not being wasted!  There’s enough of the veg bake left to accompany a meal another day - and also enough lamb to do another meal albeit quite well stretched out with other ingredients. The lamb breast was £3 - so economic is pretty much it’s middle name! The whole meal was delicious, and aside from a bit of prep utterly undemanding as once it’s in the oven the long cooking time means you can get on with other things. (Drinking tea and jigsawing here, mostly!)

There you go, another angle. You’re welcome...! 

Robyn

That didn’t last long...

Yesterday I typed that I wanted to do slightly less walking overall in March. So obviously I then walked 4 miles with MrEH in the morning, then another 7 in the afternoon going to collect my car from its MoT test. (Successful - a clean pass, no advisories). This combined with Monday’s 6 miles means I’ve walked 10% of my monthly target in just two days. Hmmm! 

In spite of meaning I walked rather further than was planned, it was a lovely walk up to just north of Sawbridgeworth, the next town north of us. Partly on footpaths, partly on quiet country lanes - the sun even eventually peeped through too! 

This was pretty much my perfect walk  really - not another soul around for most of it - just me, my thoughts, the podcasts playing in my ears, and one foot in front of the other for as long as it took. And as I kept stopping to look at things - birds, the view (pretty glorious for some of it - see below!) and even some Commonwealth War Graves in a churchyard at High Wych, it took just over 2 hours. I could have stepped it out a bit and got there a bit faster, but I wouldn’t have enjoyed it even half was much! 

To add to the walking, I also did the first workout from Alice Liveing’s March challenge - deciding to ditch the remainder of the February one for the time being so I could do the March one in at least close to real time. Oh, and a yoga practise too - quite a leg-focused one. It shouldn’t surprise me much that most of my movements today are accompanied with the soundtrack of “ouch”, should it?! Maybe today I’ll clock up one of my planned rest days? 

Robyn

February

 

Well that was quite a varied month! From freezing temperatures and even a bit of snow, to glorious spring-like days of sunshine, thank goodness! The focus for February was on keeping up the strength work and the yoga, as well as lots more walking. I finished my “Walk The Thames” challenge well ahead of the cut-off, and got my nice shiny medal through the post in the middle of the month - and then promptly signed up to another distance challenge in the shape of the RAF Museum Lancaster challenge - which requires me to walk or run 500km between the point ai registered and mid May. 

I finally managed to track down and order some heavier dumbbells - 5kg ones - as well as a proper yoga/exercise mat which has proved to be a bit of a game-changer. Turns out poses like downward dog are a lot easier when your hands and feet aren’t slipping away from you! I managed 11 strength workouts in the month which I was really pleased with, and nearly 11 hours of yoga - finishing the first Adriene 30 day challenge I’d started in January and starting on another. I also managed 179.2 miles of tracked walking - beating last month by just a fraction in spite of it being a short month, averaging 6.4 miles walked each day. 

So - what is in store for March? Well first and foremost I’m desperately keen to be able to get back to running again now. The issue with my left foot is better, but still not better *enough* I don’t think - while I do have days when it gives me no problems at all, there are also still others when it’s really still quite painful.  So - more strength work, still plenty of stretching, but probably slightly less walking overall - I plan to keep my monthly target at 170 miles but not aim to exceed it. I also want to focus on sleep - I’ve been making efforts to get to bed a little earlier and try to get at least 7 hours a night, and it really does make a difference. Listening to my body and what it needs is key here - goi g to bed slightly earlier and dropping off the sleep almost right away is better than going slightly later and then taking a while to settle.  A good bedtime routine helps here - something I’ve been working on. 

I’d like to end the month with:

8 strength workouts minimum

11 hours of yoga

170 miles walked

4 proper rest days - just a short walk plus yoga, at most.

An average of 7hrs 25 minutes sleep per night across the month. 

Bring it on! 

Robyn 

That’s Odd...

 Quite a few years ago we had a brilliant local veg box scheme - a small company run by a nice chap who really cared about the produce he sourced. Sadly his attention to detail and fresh, high quality produce actually made him too successful in some ways - he built up a sizeable customer base at which point he got an offer he couldn’t refuse from another established box scheme company, and sold to them. Rapidly from our perspective prices went up, and quality down, and we stopped ordering boxes soon after.  

We’ve said for a long while that we’re not in the least fussed about our veg being organic - we don’t buy that normally, and so there’s no reason for us to pay for a box of organic veg either, but pretty much all the schemes running currently trade in the basis of being organic. The exception to that is London based Oddbox - and I’ve been keeping a regular eye on them for the last little while in the hope that they would start covering our area, two weeks ago I popped our postcode into the box on the website and voila! “We delivery to your area on a Saturday” - hurrah! 

Oddbox work on the premise of “rescuing” fruit and veg which would otherwise go to landfill - items that don’t look right for the mainstream stores - or are the wrong size, or are just surplus to requirements. They buy it up, then sell it on to people like us who don’t care that the peppers have a few blemishes, or that I’m getting potatoes because there were more of them than the supermarkets wanted this week. 

You get your box of veg - ours was the medium Veg only box - they also do a fruit and veg combined and a fruit only box. It comes with a leaflet with some recipe ideas for some of the items in the box, and a list (above) confirming why all the items you’ve been sent are there. From my perspective the delivery time (Oddbox deliver overnight to save on emissions) plus the fact that you can see what is expected to be in your box ahead of time means that I can always be sure of fresh veg for Sunday lunch. Just getting the box means we’ll increase the amount of veg in our diet - and we were no slouches on that front in the first place.  Although this week’s offerings were fairly “usual” for us, I’m also hoping that we get some different stuff here and there to shake our meals up a bit. As for this week, there will be a stew,  a stir fry, and some salad with an omelette, as well as some spinach thrown into tonight’s risotto, and I’m looking forward to planning to use up every last scrap! 

Robyn